The best teachers weren’t the best dancers

This is based upon that task, think of an idea you like, and my idea is:

"The best teachers weren’t the best dancers."

This is something that have thought about increasingly as I reflect on my training moving into a professional career. Over the years I have been fortunate enough to train at a vocational school under some of the ‘top teachers’ in the country. I have also experienced working under other teachers as a began my dance training and later as I gained work experience with various professional companies. 

When I was younger I didn’t question my teachers, their knowledge, their training or what they achieved when they themselves were dancing (or not as the case may be). As I grew older I spoke more with my teachers and began to find out more about their backgrounds, and further down the line I began to see how this shaped the way in which the taught me. 

Looking over all those that have taught me in the dancing field I notice that many, if not the majority have been dancers in some of Britains top ballet companies at varying ranks, form Corps dancers to some of the top Principal dancers of their generation. I am of course very privileged to have had this wealth of professional experience passed onto me, but what I think is that their rank, therefore ‘better dancer’, doesn’t necessarily correspond to what I think made the better teachers.

For me the teachers that I admired the most and felt had the most impact on my training are this for one of two reasons. The first being that they truly inspired me, they made me want to come in day after day and train harder and harder. The second reason a teacher would impact me would be the sheer amount of technical knowledge they possessed and could easily break down and deliver to me as a student. I have had teachers that I felt did a little of both and some that did much more of one than the other. 

I have grown the belief that if you were the best dancer and it came very naturally to you, you are not best placed to instruct others on how to do it. Whereas if there was someone that was a good dancer but had to work at things more to improve then they would be better placed to teach others as they had worked out how to do it themselves.

The reason I like this idea this has a lot to do with how I learn, as per Kolb’s Learning cycle, I think I enter it at the Reflective Observation stage, so I think that I tend to learn best for teachers that can demonstrate as step and or then break it down in to parts, that I can observe think about it, they then would help you this out how the composition parts of something are similar to things you have done before, then allowing you to go about trying it out, suggesting tips and eventually doing it.

I think this is found in all education that the ones that were the the best at something aren’t always the best teachers. Lenon (2015) writes an article describes what makes a good teacher outlining the four key points; excellent subject knowledge, good personality (students have to like them and want to work with them), good classroom skills (delivering learning pints and teaching hard concepts easily), and high expectations of pupils ( always pushing pupils for more to be their best). This is also showed in sports, Merry (2009) writes an interesting article on a similar topic on whether former top athletes make the best coaches, it had similar findings to my thoughts, that some of the best coaches were often only average athletes themselves, but concludes that being a top athletes doesn’t stop you from being a good coach, it just does’t necessarily mean they will be.

I think a flaw with this idea could be that obviously being ‘the best’ dancer is completely subjectives and there is no way of categorically saying how good someone was, but I have looked at it mostly through who had the biggest roles and ranks in companies. Also there is no facts that the best dancers were always natural dancers, this again is something I have just found form my experience of many different teachers and tutors. Perhaps this idea is different for each individual depending on their experiences with teachers and how they like to learn, where in Kolb's learning cycle the enter.

B, Lenon (2015) What really makes a good teacher? Available at:

K, Merry (2009) Do former athletes make the best coaches? Available at:

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